Free Web NovelChapter 7: The Art of Buying Information Along with a Pair of Pants (2)
"The fourth power doesn’t have an official name," he said. "People call them, when they call them at all, the Unmarked."
Nathan felt a small shift in the atmosphere of the conversation.
"Those who weren’t marked by any god?"
"Those. Most of the Unmarked are what you were two days ago—ordinary people without access to mana, living as best they can on the margins of a system that doesn’t consider them. But there’s a smaller group within them that has turned the absence of a Seal into an organized movement. They move goods without paying divine taxes. They operate trade routes that don’t appear on maps. And they say—though this isn’t confirmed in any record—that they have their own ways of accessing power without needing a god."
*Their own ways of accessing power without needing a god.*
*Like a hooded man in an alleyway handing over black vials with a liquid that activated an unregistered Seal.*
Nathan kept his face perfectly neutral.
"That sounds illegal."
"Deeply," Berran confirmed. "But the Crown doesn’t have the resources to go after them in a frontier city like this, and the Guilds officially don’t get involved in Seal-less matters, so they exist in a gray zone. Ordinary people respect them. People with Seals either despise them or fear them. And the Church considers them active heretics, which doesn’t affect their day-to-day but does affect how they conduct themselves in public."
"How do you recognize them?"
Berran smiled differently. More carefully.
"That’s a very specific question for a newcomer."
"I’m a newcomer who already had something strange happen on his second day."
"Mmh." Berran looked at him a second longer. Then shrugged. "Dark cloaks, hoods larger than necessary, meetings in out-of-the-way places. They make themselves noticeable when they want to be noticed and disappear when they don’t. They usually have a specific way of speaking—short phrases, questions instead of statements, the kind of speech that doesn’t commit to anything concrete."
*That’s exactly the alleyway man’s pattern.*
*Point by point.*
"Do they have a symbol?" Nathan asked, as casually as he could.
"Some say yes. Some say it’s a door."
Silence.
Nathan didn’t move his face.
"A door?"
"That’s what they say. I’ve never seen one show one, so I don’t know if it’s true or just a rumor." Berran turned to the rack and began folding the items Nathan had already agreed to buy. "But the door as a symbol shows up quite a bit in stories about them. An empty door. A door with nothing behind it. The idea, I suppose, is that their power doesn’t come from a specific god, but from the very possibility of crossing over to somewhere the gods don’t reach."
*Okay. Okay. Okay.*
*This is very concrete, very specific information, and very related to things literally etched into my skin.*
"Interesting symbolism," Nathan said, in the most casual tone he could muster.
"It’s problematic symbolism." Berran finished folding the items and put them in a cloth bag. "The existence of the symbol, true or not, suggests an alternative theology to the Pantheon. And that, in Nathara, is the kind of thing the Church organizes expeditions over."
"Does that happen?"
"It used to happen more. Now the Church has bigger problems, and the organized Unmarked are a fight they’d rather not pick. But if they ever become more visible—if they ever start claiming their power in public—things are going to get very ugly very fast." Berran handed the cloth bag to Nathan. "Four silver, as we said. Minus one for your old jacket. Three silver total."
Nathan handed him three silver coins.
He had three left in his pouch.
"One last thing," Berran said, as Nathan began stowing the clothes to go change somewhere else. "Free advice, because I like you."
"I’m listening."
"Don’t talk about doors with anyone in this city. Don’t talk about organized Unmarked. Don’t talk about alternative theologies. If you’re curious about these topics, read old books in private libraries, hire corrupt priests, pay in favors. Don’t ask direct questions in markets, taverns, or plazas." Berran looked at him intently. "And if for some reason you ended up connected to that world without asking for it, find someone who knows more than you do quickly, and learn to keep your mouth shut."
Nathan stood still for a moment.
"How do you know I need that advice?"
"I don’t. But four questions ago, you walked in here as an ordinary new Hunter. Three questions ago, you were being curious about the city’s power structure. Two questions ago, you were being curious about a very specific group. And one question ago, you asked me for their symbol in a tone you controlled very well, but not quite well enough." Berran smiled slightly. "Twenty-two years at this stall, Mr. Voss. People buy clothes and sell information without realizing it all the time."
"Understood."
"Good luck with your detection-and-close-combat Class. Whatever it really is."
"Thank you, Berran."
"Come back anytime."
Nathan took the bag with the new clothes and walked back toward the inn with a specific feeling he hadn’t had in a long time.
The feeling of having more information than he’d had an hour ago.
And the slightly more uncomfortable feeling that the information he’d just bought was exactly the kind that changes the decisions you make from the moment you have it.
---
In room number seven, Nathan changed.
The leather jacket fit the way Berran had said—loose in the shoulders, fitted at the waist, sleeves at the correct length. The reinforced pants gave him mobility without sacrificing protection. The thick-soled boots were the first boots in years that didn’t have a hole in the left sole. The short dark gray cloak settled over his shoulder with a lightness that felt, against all reasonable expectations, like putting on something he should have had a long time ago.
He looked at himself in the small hand mirror on the table.
For the first time since the alleyway, he didn’t look like an Unregistered Civilian who’d stumbled upon a Seal.
He looked like a Hunter.
*Not the richest, not the most impressive. But a Hunter.*
*Mira was right. Clothes change how people see you. They change how you treat yourself. They change the kinds of things others are willing to talk to you about.*
He took the mission paper from his inner pocket.
**Package Transport. North Road Inn. Merchant Brenwick. Five silver coins.**
Soul Sense still wasn’t detecting anything particular on the north road.
But for a reason he couldn’t fully articulate, Nathan had the increasingly concrete feeling that the person who’d appeared in the alleyway with a black vial and a door-shaped Seal hadn’t been a coincidence.
And that the same person, or someone connected to them, knew exactly what they’d put inside him.
And that sooner or later, that person was going to want to talk again.
*But not today,* Nathan thought, putting the paper away.
*Today, I deliver a package.*
He went down the inn’s stairs in the new clothes, the cloak hanging over his shoulder, with the particular sensation of starting to look less like the Nathan who’d arrived in Greywall and more like the Nathan who was going to have to survive in it.
